Programme

The development of the Type 094 began sometime in the late 1980s to early 1990s, reportedly with the assistance of Rubin Central Design Bureau for Marine Engineering in St. Petersburg, one of Russia’s primary nuclear submarine designers. Construction of the first-of-class began in 1999 and the submarine was launched in July 2004. A second hull was launched possibly in 2007 and may be commissioned in 2010. The initial operational capability was achieved around 2012 to 2015.

In 2007, satellite images captured the two Type 094 boats docked at the Bohai Shipbuilding Heavy Industry Co., Ltd. One of the submarines was also spotted at the Xiaopingdao SLBM test base near Dalian, Liaoning Province. In April 2008, Federation of American Scientists (FAS) website revealed that a Type 094 had been deployed to the newly-built Yalongwan nuclear submarine base near Sanyang, Hainan Province.

In early 2017, it was reported that the PLA Navy had commissioned two additional boats in the improved Type 094A (Jin-II class) variant. The submarines feature a redesigned sail with a tapered front and all windows removed. In April 2018, the two Type 094A boats were unveiled during the PLA naval parade in the South China Sea.

The Type 094 appears to be similar to the Type 093 SSN in hull design, suggesting that the two submarines share the same design baseline. The water-drop shape hull has been raised behind the sail to accommodate 12 vertically-positioned missile tubes, each housing a JL-2 SLBM. There are a pair of fin-mounted hydroplanes, four diving planes, and a single propeller. The dive displacement was estimated to be 8,000 to 9,000 t.

The JL-2 SLBM is a three-stage, solid-propellant ballistic missile, designed and developed by CASIC 2nd Academy. It is a derivation of the land-based DF-31 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The maximum range of the JL-2 was estimated to be 7,000 to 8,000 km, three times that of the first-generation JL-1 SLBM carried by the Type 092. Each JL-2 can carry a single thermonuclear warhead of 25 to 1,000 kt yield. Alternatively, the missile was said to be able to carry three or more 90 kT multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRV), though this cannot be confirmed.